Swedenborg and Life Live Recap: What It Means to Be a “Church” — 2/19/2018

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In this episode, hosts Curtis Childs and Jonathan Rose discover what eighteenth-century philosopher and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg meant when he said “church.” Spoiler alert: it’s more than just a building.

Icebreaker

Curtis would love to share the idea of the influence of the spiritual world on our daily life. All day, we seem to be constantly attacked with thoughts and ideas we don’t want, but Swedenborg tells us those thoughts don’t necessarily come from us—in other words, it’s OK to be critical of your own thoughts and feelings.

Curtis sneaks in another one, because it’s so hard to choose: divine providence—the knowledge that God guides everything toward good.

Jonathan wishes everyone knew that there is a loving, divine presence in everything—including all our thoughts and ideas. In addition to being a reassuring thought, it gives a whole new meaning to prayer and asking the divine for answers. It can be remarkably freeing to know that there’s a love there that has your back no matter what.

Still, though, this does not mean that people are part of the church by merely being born where the Word exists and the Lord is known; people are part of the church only if they are being regenerated by the Lord by means of truths from the Word—that is, they are living caring lives. . . . The Lord’s church includes all people in the world who are living a good life according to their own religion. . . . All the people who live good lives and acknowledge one God, no matter where they are, are accepted by the Lord and come into heaven. This is because everyone who is devoted to doing good recognizes the Lord, since goodness comes from the Lord and the Lord is present in it. (New Jerusalem§246:1, 2)

That definition sounds pretty broad, but, as Swedenborg goes on to explain, it’s also intensely personal:

The church, like heaven, is within us as individuals, so the church in general is made up of people who have the church within themselves. . . . There is no church within us unless the truths we have been taught are grounded in good actions from a caring heart, and therefore grounded in the way we live. There is no church in us if all we care about are the truths that we call matters of faith. . . . People who are of the church—that is, people who have the church within themselves—are drawn to the truth for its own sake; that is, they love what is true because it is true. They also search the Word to find out whether the teachings of the church in which they were born are true. (New Jerusalem§246:4, 1)

The church inside us is the part of us that seeks the truth of love and goodness. This means that anybody who seeks and serves love (no matter what they call it) is part of the same church.

Curtis illustrates this with balloons. We may think of a church as a certain point on the globe, but really, it’s everywhere that there are people who have faith.

But Swedenborg uses the word “church” in other senses as well: sometimes to refer to a particular religious faith or to a denomination within Christianity—just as we do today. But he also uses the word to refer to spiritual ages in humanity’s history. So when he talks about the “New Church,” he’s talking about the fifth spiritual age of humanity. This age was just starting during his lifetime, and we’re still seeing it come into effect. This transformation is not instant, but gradual, and it begins within people’s hearts.

Since reading Swedenborg can be challenging, Javier finds Swedenborg and Life helps him understand the messages and how they apply to his life. The concept of regeneration—the process of looking inside yourself and thinking about your motivations and how to bring goodness and truth into your life—has changed the way that he relates to other people in his life. He’s been searching for a new church in Mexico, but he has only been able to find a community online so far.

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In a lighthearted and interactive live webcast format, host Curtis Childs from the Swedenborg Foundation and featured guests explore topics from Swedenborg’s eighteenth-century writings about his spiritual experiences and afterlife explorations and discuss how they relate to modern-day life and death.
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When we wake up in heaven, Swedenborg tells us, angels roll a covering from off of our left eye so that we can see everything in a spiritual light. The offTheLeftEye YouTube channel uses an array of educational and entertaining video formats to look at life and death through an uplifting spiritual lens.
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